Fronteras

Fronteras

9:23 am

Mon March 31, 2014

For this story I assumed there were lessons to be learned from the Yarnell Hill Fire. But when I called Stephen Pyne, a fire historian at Arizona State University, he said, “for all of the sort of graphic and horrible qualities of the fire that made it so compelling to the general public, I don’t think it taught the fire community anything.”

Tue March 25, 2014

During our road trip along the U.S./Mexico border, we took a walk along the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. You can look right into Mexico and the heart of Ciudad Juarez across the river. Monique Ortiz Uribe brought us here. She's a reporter with public radio's Fronteras desk, which covers the border, and she pointed out a gray office building.

MONIQUE ORTIZ URIBE: See, that's city hall inside Juarez in Mexico, and to our right we can see the international bridge that connects the two cities of El Paso and Juarez.

Fronteras

8:40 am

Mon March 3, 2014

David Sharp and his brother grow 2,400 acres of alfalfa, wheat and cotton. He says alfalfa is a good rotation crop because it puts nitrogen back in the soil. There's also a big market for it in the U.S. and overseas.

Federal officials are cutting off water to some California farms stuck in the worst drought on record. At the same time Arizona farmers are irrigating their fields with the diminishing Colorado River. They’re using the water to grow most of the country’s winter vegetables, and even shipping some crops to China. In the final part of the series Pipe Dreams, a look at the controversy of indirectly exporting water overseas.

Most people are squeamish about the notion of consuming recycled wastewater. But experts say we might have to get used to the idea, given our current drought and the growing population in the Southwest. How does that water get clean enough to drink?

California is coping with the worst drought in recorded history. California’s governor has asked state residents to cut back water use by 20 percent. The rest of the Southwest is also experiencing extreme to severe drought. In the first part of a water series we’re calling Pipe Dreams, Laurel Morales of our Changing America Desk went to Las Vegas to talk to a woman who has redefined water management in the west — outgoing water czar Pat Mulroy.

Fri October 11, 2013

TUCSON, Ariz. - At least 12 activists were arrested Friday morning in Tucson after they chained themselves to buses full of people awaiting a deportation hearing. The effort shut down the government's deportation hearings for the day.

The buses en route to the federal courthouse carried 70 immigrants who had crossed the border illegally. They were caught up in a daily mass deportation program called Operation Streamline.